8 Ways to Get Smarter (Without Leaving Your Desk)

Why settle for Wikipedia? Yes, we love the Web's favorite encyclopedia, but soon you'll be auditing MIT classes, reading Einstein's papers, and seeing the universe the way astronomers see it—and all for free online. Here are some great ways to stretch your brain while hanging out at home.

Explore the Universe

Explore the Universe

Back in 2000, the American Museum of Natural History introduced the Digital Galaxy, an interactive map of the Milky Way. Two years later, they expanded the Digital Galaxy into the Digital Universe and turned it into a free download. Today, you can interact with data collected from the far reaches of space, and the AMNH doesn't plan on stopping the database's growth anytime soon. They add newly gathered information every year.

The app is just a few hundred megabytes, and the files just take a few minutes to download. But exploring the known universe requires a little training—there's a 200-plus-page manual describing how to turn labels identifying galaxies and stars on and off, dim or brighten heavenly bodies, and check out the data sent back by the WISE or Kepler missions.

"The one thing about Partiview [the Digital Universe application] is that there's a bit of a learning curve," Brian Abbott, manager of the Digital Universe, says. "It was developed for efficiency, but once you learn how to use it, it's really easy. If you're willing to sit down and become familiar with this tool, then you can have this vision of the 3D universe that not many people, including astronomers, have."

Go to MIT for Free (Sort of)

Go to MIT for Free (Sort of)

If you never had the grades to get into Harvard or MIT (or perhaps the heaps of cash to pay for either), you can still access a part of the experience. Starting this fall, Harvard and MIT will begin allowing anyone with an Internet connection the ability to audit some of their classes for free. The program is called edX, and it will announce the course offerings sometime this summer. But at the moment about 120,000 students are using a preliminary version of the program at MIT; last semester that program offered "Circuits and Electronics," which serves as an introduction to electronic engineering for first-year undergraduates.

Just don't run out and buy a frame for your new Harvard or MIT diploma quite yet. Students can get a certificate of completion if they excel in the courses and are willing to pay a small fee, but it won't bear either school's prestigious name.